The Avondale Earthquake Assistance Centre reached a milestone last week with the 1000th visitor walking through the door. The service continues to provide support and information to people who are making decisions around their land offers and we congratulate the team for the support they’re providing to residents.

We’re really pleased with the input from people who came to the four draft recovery strategy consultation workshops last week. These were information and input sessions and people had some really good ideas.  Around 200 people have provided written feedback so far, either online through the CERA website or by using the comment form and posting it back to us. Consultation finishes at the end of the month.

We are also encouraging community groups and workplaces to hold their own discussions. We have a PowerPoint template on the CERA website for people to use and run their own sessions if they want to - such as was successfully run by two Canterbury University students last week. Visit our Recovery Strategy Page for more information.  There are a whole lot of plans already underway in a number of recovery areas. The purpose of the strategy is to pull together the recovery plans that are already being developed, look at the timing and priorities of the recovery work, see if there are any gaps and ensure there is a co-ordinated approach to the recovery as whole.

Planning for the public bus tours into the CBD red zone is underway. We are working with emergency services, the Christchurch City Council, the army (who staff the cordons), Department of Labour (who cover health and safety issues), St John and community support services.  There are a number of things to work through around logistics, safety, resourcing, timing, staffing and support and minimising disruption to the work in the CBD. At this stage we are looking at holding them on Saturday afternoons and Sundays when there is less demolition work going on. We want to make it happen as soon as is practical in as safe a way as possible and will let people know as details are finalise.

The Cashel Mall restart with temporary retail in containers and the reopening of Ballantynes is on track with the owners group and others involved confident they can meet the completion date of 29 Oct.